FINAL FANTASY XV: Kingsglaive REVIEW

Post navigation

(This review will be mostly spoiler free.) (There is one, and it’s hardly a spoiler in the film.)

FINAL FANTASY XV: Kingsglaive is an ambitious project created by Square Enix that is a prequel to FFXV. Have you seen it yet? You really should!

Seriously. Watch it right now. It sets up the story for XV fantastically.

I will be blunt. I had no idea what to expect from the film, given Squares terrible track record in making films I had not real desire to watch it. Not until I waltzed into my local EB Games and got the Deluxe Edition and was told by the amazing staff that I had to watch the film first before playing the game, as it sets a lot of the story up. Perfectly.

The CGI is extremely well done. There were so many times I was watching and I thought the cast was real people. Nyx especially. So many times I questioned if he was a real person on screen. The fight scenes are like it’s taken right out of the game. I want to jump around and do some of these moves with Noctis when my game loads. The only drawback was the lipsync was not always good. It is by far the best lip work I have seen in a CGI film, but at some points it did take away from the scene. But nothing major. Seriously, it is a personal peeve of mine in animation.

The voice work is by far the best. There are A List actors like Sean Bean and Lena Headey in the main cast. There wasn’t one role that I thought was miscast or over acted. Some scenes were movie silly (like extensive talking in fights, or standing around watching people die,) but nothing to me stuck out as poorly written or not excecuted well. I hope that Lena Headey is also in the game as she was brilliant as Lunafreya. She never once came across as helpless (which I was worried about the damsel trope being a big problem) but it was well executed and makes sense in the film. Aaron Paul was brilliant as Nyx. I expected him to be a bigger role later on in the game, and I look forward to seeing how the game handles his character development within the film. Seriously stoked to see if Aaron is in the game at some point. Sean Bean is fantastic as king Lucis (spoilers) was not shocked by the ending, when Sean Bean is in a film… what does he usually do? BUT it was epic.

The pacing of the film was really good. I never felt bored, or felt that certain scenes were taking too long, there was just enough of a certain Mcguffin to not bash your head with its importance.

There are tons of little Easter eggs in the film for fans of Final Fantasy to keep an eye out for. If you played any of the demos, you will also notice locations in Insomnia. I am also certain that a major big bad is a special monster from FFVII, but I am not 100%, he looks a lot like it though.

The first thing I wanted to do after watching this was play FFXV. But I had to work.

This is by far the best Square Enid film to date. I am thankful that I was told to watch it first, as everyone should.